Trouble with vanilla Bonfire/CI installation and .htaccess - php

Question

OK, so my situation is rather simple (although not yet resolved).
I downloaded Bonfire (for CodeIgniter)
Created a new folder in my Sites folder, let's say bonfire (I'm using XAMPP for Mac)
I'm going to http://localhost/~drkameleon/bonfire (where the install page should appear based on the docs)
And I'm getting an error message
Server error!
The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete
your request. Either the server is overloaded or there was an error in
a CGI script.
Now, I'm thinking that it may have something to do with the installation folder actually being a subfolder (I think it's mentioned somewhere in Bonfire's documentation, too). However, I still don't know what exactly to tweak in the huge .htaccess file that comes along with Bonfire.
So, here it is :
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Webfont access
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Allow access from all domains for webfonts.
# Alternatively you could only whitelist your
# subdomains like "subdomain.example.com".
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
<FilesMatch "\.(ttf|ttc|otf|eot|woff|font.css)$">
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Proper MIME type for all files
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# JavaScript
# Normalize to standard type (it's sniffed in IE anyways)
# tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4329#section-7.2
AddType application/javascript js
# Audio
AddType audio/ogg oga ogg
AddType audio/mp4 m4a
# Video
AddType video/ogg ogv
AddType video/mp4 mp4 m4v
AddType video/webm webm
# SVG
# Required for svg webfonts on iPad
# twitter.com/FontSquirrel/status/14855840545
AddType image/svg+xml svg svgz
AddEncoding gzip svgz
# Webfonts
AddType application/vnd.ms-fontobject eot
AddType application/x-font-ttf ttf ttc
AddType font/opentype otf
AddType application/x-font-woff woff
# Assorted types
AddType image/x-icon ico
AddType image/webp webp
AddType text/cache-manifest appcache manifest
AddType text/x-component htc
AddType application/xml rss atom xml rdf
AddType application/x-chrome-extension crx
AddType application/x-opera-extension oex
AddType application/x-xpinstall xpi
AddType application/octet-stream safariextz
AddType application/x-web-app-manifest+json webapp
AddType text/x-vcard vcf
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Gzip compression
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
# Force deflate for mangled headers developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/pushing-beyond-gzipping/
<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
# HTML, TXT, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, XML, HTC:
<IfModule filter_module>
FilterDeclare COMPRESS
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/html
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/css
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/plain
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/x-component
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/javascript
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/json
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xhtml+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/rss+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/atom+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/vnd.ms-fontobject
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $image/svg+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $image/x-icon
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/x-font-ttf
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $font/opentype
FilterChain COMPRESS
FilterProtocol COMPRESS DEFLATE change=yes;byteranges=no
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_filter.c>
# Legacy versions of Apache
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css application/json
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml application/xml text/x-component
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml application/rss+xml application/atom+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon image/svg+xml application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf font/opentype
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Start rewrite engine
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Turning on the rewrite engine is necessary for the following rules and features.
# FollowSymLinks must be enabled for this to work.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options +FollowSymlinks -Indexes
RewriteEngine On
# If you installed Bonfire in a subfolder, you will need to
# change the following line to match the subfolder you need.
# http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritebase
RewriteBase /
#Removes access to the system folder by users.
#Additionally this will allow you to create a System.php controller,
#previously this would not have been possible.
#'system' can be replaced if you have renamed your system folder.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^bonfire/codeigniter.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
# Rewrite "www.example.com -> example.com"
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
</IfModule>
#Checks to see if the user is attempting to access a valid file,
#such as an image or css document, if this isn't true it sends the
#request to index.php
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# UTF-8 encoding
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Use UTF-8 encoding for anything served text/plain or text/html
AddDefaultCharset utf-8
# Force UTF-8 for a number of file formats
AddCharset utf-8 .css .js .xml .json .rss .atom
# Block access to "hidden" directories whose names begin with a period. This
# includes directories used by version control systems such as Subversion or Git.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -d
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule "(^|/)\." - [F]
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
# If we don't have mod_rewrite installed, all 404's
# can be sent to index.php, and everything works as normal.
# Submitted by: ElliotHaughin
ErrorDocument 404 index.php
</IfModule>
If you've got any idea, I'd be more than happy to try it out.

Answer 1

In the 'Start rewrite engine' section:
# If you installed Bonfire in a subfolder, you will need to
# change the following line to match the subfolder you need.
# http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritebase
RewriteBase /
Try changing yours to
RewriteBase /~drkameleon/bonfire/
Also double check that you have the rewrite module activated in Apache using phpinfo()